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RD: Future Echoes
Overview When Red Dwarf breaks light speed, the crew begin to experience visions from their future. Summary Lister and The Cat prepare to go into stasis while Red Dwarf goes to light speed until they get back to Earth. Rimmer expects that when the journey is over, he will no longer be needed, so he demands to be left on even though he will be alone. Unfortunately they reach light speed 22 hours before they expected and don't get to go into stasis after all. While shaving, Lister watches himself accidentally cutting himself in the mirror and Rimmer rushing up behind him, then a few seconds later he does cut himself and yells for Rimmer, but dismisses what he saw in the mirror. Lister goes to the drive room and talks to Rimmer, only Rimmer is enjoying a conversation with an invisible person. Rimmer leaves through one door and immediately returns through another where he has the same conversation with Lister that he had before. Lister tries to tell him about what is happening and Rimmer is convinced when he sees Cat rush past them in the hall but then sees him in the sleeping quarters immediately after. Holly calls the experiences "Future Echoes", pieces of the future that they are catching up with as a result of light speed, backed up when Rimmer spots a picture showing Lister holding two babies in his arms. Rimmer sees Lister getting killed by an exploding panel in the drive room and doesn't seem to be too concerned about it in front of Lister. Lister goes to face his death, but doesn't get killed. They return to their quarters and see a very old Lister lying in the bunk. The Old Lister tells them that it was Lister's son that Rimmer saw in the drive room and tells Lister to grab his camera and run to the medical bay. Rimmer wonders how Lister fathers two children without a woman on board and Lister responds with "I dunno, but it'll be a lot of fun finding out!" The two go to the medical bay and are greeted by Lister, the same age he is now, introducing them to his twin boys, Jim (named after Jim Bexley Speed) and Bexley (named after Jim Bexley Speed who played "Roof Attack" in Lister's favourite Zero Gravity Football team, the London Jets.) Notes *Originally this episode was number four in the series but was switched to second because the producers felt that it was the best episode to really introduce the sci-fi aspects of the show. *This is the first episode to deal with matters of time travel and changing future and past events, a theory which will be used again in several more episodes: Stasis Leak, Backwards, Timeslides, White Hole, The Inquisitor, Out Of Time, Tikka To Ride, Ouroboros, Cassandra, and Lemons. *To combat the problem of new viewers not understanding what was going on (a massive ship with only Lister, Rimmer and the Cat aboard), Holly's opening SOS message was introduced with him delivering a different witty remark at the end. *We learn that Lister has two robotic goldfish, Lennon and McCartney. The Cat, however, appears unaware that they're artificial. *In the Red Dwarf universe, Polaroids are still being made several centuries into the future. The photo of Lister holding the two babies is a real Polaroid which was filmed developing in real time during the closing credits. An Easter egg on the Series I DVD includes raw footage of this sequence (and the two babies can be heard crying in the background of the shot, as the photo had just been taken). *The 171-year old Lister seen in the episode has a metal prosthetic right arm. This coincides with when Lister has his right arm cut off by Kryten in an attempt to kill the epideme virus inside Lister, and Kryten starts to build Lister a prosthetic arm, in the Series VII episode "RD: Epideme". However, Lister's flesh-and-blood arm is later rebuilt by the nanobots in "RD: Nanarchy", throwing this future echo into some confusion - it may have been an echo of, say, "one possible future" where Lister never had his arm rebuilt. *Rimmer says to Lister that "you can't cheat death by whacking it on the head." Ironically, at a later date when Rimmer has been resurrected by the nanobots in the flesh and is facing his end a second time, Rimmer kicks Death himself in the balls and runs away at the conclusion of Series VIII. (Only the Good...) Noteworthy Dialogue *'Holly:' I am Holly; an AI computer with an IQ of 6,000. The same IQ as 6,000 P.E. teachers. *'Rimmer:' Clock stop, six forty-seven. Not a bad little time for the mile. Pity I was only doing the three hundred meters. *'Lister:' But Rimmer, death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up the way it used to. Rimmer: That's what they say ,Lister, but If you had two people coming for a job, and one of them was dead, which one would you pick? *'Lister:' I'm going out like I came in -- screaming and kicking. Rimmer: You can't whack Death on the head! Lister: If he comes near me I'm gonna rip his nipples off!!! *'Holly:' Look, I'm a tenth-generation AI hologramic computer. I'm not your mum. Rimmer: Yes, fantastic. Holly: What do you want this time? A hand with your homework? Or would you like me to sew little name tags in your P.E. kit? *'Rimmer': But you are how you look, and I look....like a complete and total tit! Goofs Main Article: Continuity Errors *In the "Double Rimmer" scene, Rimmer doesn't lift his right hand to point the second time he says ...and I've decided...shut up! *In the same scene, when the first Rimmer leaves, the second Rimmer walks in at the same time, causing Lister to scream. If you look at the right edge of the canister dispenser you can clearly see the line caused by the split screen. *In Rimmer's future echo he first says "You're space crazy" and then in the actual conversation with Lister, he says "You are space crazy". *Both Rimmer and Lister use a door in the Drive Room which wasn't there in the previous episode. *The sign above the Stasis Booth has changed colour from the previous episode. *Lister claims he's never read a book, but in "The End" he claims he forgot to return his library book; though Lister was speaking in hyperbole, and for all we know the library book was illustrated. Category:Episodes Category:Episodes Category:Series I Episodes